


Back Where You Belong

by Elementalist



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Also known as, Gen, Rated for swearing, Ronan Lynch Has No Chill, Ronan Lynch is in this one, Tarot, and Adam questions, can we also just say Noah is the sweet boy, cause you know, if he belongs with this group of boys, pre-blue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 21:32:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19093546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elementalist/pseuds/Elementalist
Summary: In which Adam has the bright idea to do a tarot reading for the gang--just for fun, just because. Maybe it isn't the brightest idea to mess around with things like this, even if it's only to pass the time.





	Back Where You Belong

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bobtheacorn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bobtheacorn/gifts).



> Bobtheacorn challenged me with the prompt of Adam messing with tarot, and a snatch of dialogue between Ronan and Adam. Here it is! It was fun looking up different tarot meanings, only to use the first card I thought of. HA! You know how it goes!

Gansey turns the pristine box around in his hands, surveying each, sharp corner, brows raised enough Adam spies them over the bold frames of his glasses. The deck is a modest one--in size, art, and price, but in Gansey's fine hands, the tarot cards could be made of gold. No, they  _ should _ be.

Adam takes them when Gansey passes them over. The cards are of the glossy sort, slippery in his hands and resistant to shuffling. Adam tries his best, but it's Ronan's irritation and strong arms that finally breaks them in. Noah, for his part, sits off to the side and watches them quietly, knees up, his face buried somewhere behind.

"So, to clarify," Gansey says. "Adam,  _ you _ want to try a reading?" 

Ronan drops the deck in the center of the loose circle they form on the floor. Adam lifts his chin, staring at Gansey, who sits directly across from him.

"It couldn't hurt." Adam shrugs. 

"Last call-in was a sham anyway," Ronan says. His eyes narrow, not at the terrible past experience (a generic conversation about their love lives and to-be successes that cost Gansey enough money to feed Adam for a week), but at the tarot cards themselves. Superstitious as always.

The argument is an old one. Adam's worn nerves fatigue even further.

He rocks forward and drags the deck closer, pointing at it, facing Ronan's cool expression with one to match. "You shuffled them. You draw first."

Ronan doesn't move. His mouth forms the word, "No" before he says it aloud.

Adam pushes the deck closer, until it's almost touching the visible cut of skin in Ronan's ruined, black jeans. He was there that day, out in the parking lot with Noah, the summer sun scorching his scalp. He'd heard the heft of Ronan's body skidding across the blacktop, witnessed the skateboard arching over Monmouth's tall fence in an impressive arc of color. Bright blood rolled down Ronan's sharp elbows, and an even sharper smile cut his mouth. Adam still isn't sure what convinced him to try the same ruthless stunts, if it was Noah's encouraging hoots or Ronan's disdainful pride at drawing first blood, but he did, and he wore a testimony of scabs on his legs and hands too.

They lock eyes. Ronan's Celtic blues are set to 'kill', Adam's are heavy and tired and bruised beneath from more than just exhaustion. Absently, Adam picks at one of the scabs around his ankle, peeling it away from new, pink skin, nerves burning.

"It's the rules,” Adam explains, for all the good it may do. “Whoever shuffles the deck has to draw from it. Something about energy."

Gansey perks up at the word. This is why they mess around with these things, call-ins and tarot decks and Gansey's expensive meters--for  _ energy _ , for the location of the sly ley line, and a rumored king sleeping along it.

"And intent," Gansey agrees.

Something gives, and Adam doesn't know what inspires it. Ronan doesn't experience a range of normal human emotion, so things like 'guilt' or 'curiosity' don't propel his hand forward. Maybe nothing does. Maybe it's Gansey. Or maybe he's just tired of the worn look Adam's fixed him with.

Ronan slaps a card face down beside the deck, then he crosses his arms, fingers hooking over his elbows as if he'd been born like that, a foul-faced, stiff-limbed gargoyle, and would never move from that exact pose again. Gansey leans forward, back straight, hazel eyes shining and eager, Ronan's exact opposite, always.

Adam breaths out a breath.

Carefully, he flips the card over, the hard laminate  _ snick _ ing between his fingers.

Noah murmurs, "The Devil,"  against his legs.

It isn't, though by Gansey's expectant look, by Ronan's hard glare, the room at large assumes it will be. Instead, the image shows a woman clad in transparent silks, arms raised high above her crown of brown curls. Her hands are gently cupped around the spires of a large, six-pointed star. It stabs into the tender skin of her palms. 

"Make a wish," Gansey murmurs.

Adam tilts his head slowly. The card is reversed, if that means anything, which it must because the moment he thinks it, his stomach trips over itself. 

Psychics make it look easy: study a card closely enough and the meaning will make itself clear. Every image tells a story, grants an insight, answers a question. All you have to do is learn the language the cards speak. Adam traces the upside-down woman with his eyes, from her naked feet to the starlight halo glowing around her head. And he sees, he senses, he knows--nothing at all.

Ronan scoffs. He's as rigid as ever. "Go on then. What's my future say? That there's gonna be fucking stars out tonight?"

Anyone can guess that. Afternoon reigns beautiful and blue against Monmouth's warped windows,  not a cloud obscuring the sunshine. Gansey sits in a puddle of gold. It washes poor Noah's pale skin nearly white.

Adam scratches his cheek. "Phone," he says.

The boys exchange looks.

Gansey speaks first because he's Gansey, because, out of them all, his curiosity is a living, prowling thing, and Adam loves him for it. "The cards are telling you about a  _ phone _ ?"

God love him.

"No, I need someone's phone so I can look up the meaning." Adam glances reluctantly from Gansey to Ronan. He finds Ronan staring back. "What? Do I  _ look _ like a psychic to you?"

He knows better than to go around provoking snakes. Sometimes Adam forgets Ronan is a viper with a shaved head and narrowed eyes.

In answer, Ronan's mouth splits, all daggers and fangs instead of blunt teeth. "You want me to answer that?"

For a dizzying moment, Adam  _ does _ . He wants, suddenly, to know what Ronan thinks when he looks at him, what he sees and if, maybe, it's not a poor kid from a trailer park struggling to play a part, to blend into this world like he may, one day, belong here as much as they do.

Just as quickly, the desire fizzles out. Whatever Ronan would say would be full of venom--either from the harsh truth of it or the dense lie.

Adam stretches his hand towards Gansey instead.

But it’s Ronan's phone that appears seconds later, dropped without ceremony and nearly pitched to the floor. The  _ concrete _ floor. Ronan may not care if that expensive glass screen shatters or if the mainframe rattles itself obsolete, but Adam--who can't even guess at the heavy price tag the phone carries, let alone afford to repay it--does. His fingers automatically snap close; the tips of his fingers graze across Ronan's retreating hand, the loose ends of his leather bracelets.

The venom comes out, just like Adam expected. "Well? Tell me what it fucking means, Parrish." 

It doesn't go unnoticed that Ronan hides his hands away. Not by Adam. Not by Gansey, who glances over at the exact moment Ronan shoves them in his pockets.

"Easy," Gansey warns--Ronan, Adam, the both of them. "It's just for fun. No need to get up in arms over it."

Anything is worth a fight if your name begins with  _ Ronan _ and ends with  _ Lynch _ .  Especially if it's towards anything that starts with  _ Adam _ and ends with  _ Parrish _ . 

Ronan snorts. Gansey shoots him a stern look. Noah, quiet Noah, flicks his eyes between all three of them before settling, lastly, on the tarot card.

Adam reluctantly uses the slow wifi--whatever Monmouth once manufactured, it now produces steel-resistance and far-flinging distance that even high-speed internet struggles with--and a carefully worded search question to translate the gauzy woman's meaning.

It's. . .not what he expects.

It's  _ more _ . As he reads, goosebumps crawl up the back of his neck.

Ronan slices up a brow. He doesn't say anything, but the look alone is worth ten times as many words.

"You've lost," Adam says, "your faith in something. Yourself. Or something you loved. Or. . .both. And it's making you insecure about the future, and where to go from here."

His friends reactions are all different, and every one of them scream loud in their own ways. Noah's eyes widen, and his fidgeting hands lift up, covering his face one moment, burying deep in his mussed hair the next. Gansey's expression falls from stern to stricken, and he looks to Ronan, already pushing up from the floor to go to him and pick up the pieces.

Ronan--Ronan stares. He stares, and Adam catches fire.

Of them all, Ronan is the most religious. He frequents Sunday services and bathes weekly in holy water and rosary beads. His belief is steadfast, even as it means believing in nothing at all. No--that isn't quite right. Ronan's god existed, once, but unlike most gods, this one died a very messy, very human death.

Suddenly, Ronan is on his feet. There is no moment between him sitting to this.  It's as if he's always been standing, the sunlight circling the crown of his head, marking him as he truly is:  the patron saint of grieving. 

For a moment, nothing happens. Ronan towers above them, breathing quick, shallow breaths. Gansey is frozen between sitting and rising to his feet. Noah won't look at anyone. Adam can't look  _ away _ .

"Like I said--"  Ronan swings out a foot. The toes of his boot knock the deck perfectly, spraying all those new, glossy cards further into the room. Adam flinches back. "--it's all a goddamn sham."

He storms off, each footfall a strike of thunder Adam feels vibrating through his bones.

Gansey leaps to his feet. "Ronan--" He marches on, down the stairs, outside into a quickly falling evening. "-- _ Ronan _ , wait."

Low conversation sneaks under the door. A car door slams. An engine keens a banshee warning as someone speeds out of the parking lot, gas gunning, tires squealing.

Silence.

Adam remembers he's still holding Ronan's phone.

Another car starts up, this one sputtering out protests all the while.  But it finally catches, and the chase follows, the Pig as earnest as Gansey is to find Ronan before Ronan finds himself. Adam carefully sets the cellphone down.

"You don't, you know."

Adam's shoulders bounce up. Noah squats beside him, face scrunched up, reaching forward to pick up one of the nearest cards. In all the commotion, Adam forgot he wasn't alone.

"What?" 

"Look like a psychic," Noah clears up. He seems tired, all at once,  like holding the card is too much for him. Adam takes it.

"Oh. Yeah. I guess not." Adam offers a wan smile as flips it over to see what it is. A man stands in a forest, holding a staff. Vines curl around him. It reads, in thin, spidery script at the bottom:  _ The Magician _ . He adds it to the lonely  _ Star _ . “If I was, I’d have known not to bother with all this.”

Quietly, the two pick up the rest, stack them back in their deck. Dusk bleeds like a wounded animal, scarlet red and bruised, the minted blue of late evening chased away. Cicadas scream and scream. Distantly, Adam imagines he can hear the Pig herding the BMW back home, though really, the sound might be only diesel trucks shooting down the highway or thunderclouds snagged on the mountains. Still, it’s a safe decision to leave before Ronan comes back. He left angry; he'll return worse, if he returns at all.

Adam rises to his feet. “I should go.”

In this new lightening, Noah’s hair blushes, blond now pink in the sinking, October sun.  Shadows crawl the length of the room, take up residence under Gansey’s bed, his desk, ooze out from Adam’s own feet. Monmouth transforms in twilight into something haunted, full of the same potential Gansey is always so earnest to find. That is, full of  _ magic _ . 

Walking over to Gansey’s cluttered desk, Adam places Ronan’s phone and the deck of cards on one of the many open notebooks there, obscuring paper clippings and cleanly-penned notes. Everything is red, red, red. The paper, Gansey’s mint plants, Adam’s tired hands.

Noah’s face when he steps up beside him. “It’s not your fault, you know.”

Adam knows, though he doubts Ronan will think along the same lines.  _ Sham _ or not, just for fun or not, what Adam said managed to prod a still-tender spot, drew up things Ronan didn’t want to think about. Bad things. Awful, awful things.

"Maybe."

“He’s mad, not stupid.”

Adam thinks of home, and his reply is bitter, “That’s the same thing.” 

He pushes away from the desk, and runs into Noah, chest knocking into his shoulder. Noah shuffles back, lifting a hand, rubbing quickly underneath his eye. He’s upset. That’s three-for-three in the soft span of an hour. What is he doing here, with these people? As usual, without Gansey there to make him feel wanted-- _ important _ , _ needed _ \--Adam realizes he doesn’t fit in with these other boys, not at all. 

“I need to go,” Adam says again, and this time, he heads for the door.

Noah’s soft voice catches him before he hits the stairs. “He isn’t your dad. He won’t hurt you just because you said something wrong.”

Adam jolts. His hand snaps out, catches the railing, but when he turns to argue, to defend himself--to defend his  _ dad _ \--Noah isn’t there. All that’s left is Gansey’s room, still and empty, flooded with bright, autumn light. 

It’s while he’s outside, gathering his bike from where he left it, that he thinks he hears Noah again, saying something like  _ he won’t hurt you at all _ . In the end, though, it’s just the wind, whistling through the metal beams holding Monmouth from collapsing for good, urging him back home.


End file.
